Owner Of Sprint: I Want To Buy T-Mobile And Start A Price War With Verizon And AT&T

President of Japan's
mobile carrier Softbank Masayoshi Son at a news conference
announcing Softbank will acquire US-based Sprint Nextel in Tokyo
on October 15, 2012.Yoshikazu
Tsuno/AFP/File

The Japanese owner of US mobile carrier Sprint said Monday he
wanted to launch a "price war" with the two major carriers as he
seeks to acquire T-Mobile's US unit.

Masayoshi Son, the tycoon whose SoftBank company holds a
controlling stake in Sprint, confirmed his reported interest in
T-Mobile, whose parent company is Germany's Deutsche Telekom, in
an interview broadcast on US public television.

Son, while declining to discuss details, said that he wanted to
go head-to-head and undercut US giants AT&T and Verizon,
replicating his aggressive strategy of sacrificing short-term
profit while pursuing a greater market share.

"I would like to have the real fight, not the pseudo-fight," Son
told "The Charlie Rose Show."

"If I can have the real fight, I go in a more massive price war,"
he said.

"I want to be number one. So if we are number three, and if we
have enough chance, I want to be number one. So I would go to
price competition, very much aggressively," he said.

Sprint, the third-ranking US carrier, closed a deal in July that
allowed SoftBank to take a controlling stake for $21.6 billion --
the largest overseas acquisition ever by a Japanese company.

Japan's Nikkei business daily reported in December that SoftBank
was in talks to acquire T-Mobile US, which would make it the
world's second largest mobile carrier after China Mobile.

But any such deal would be expected to face close scrutiny by US
regulators in charge of ensuring competition. AT&T in 2011
sought to buy T-Mobile for $39 billion but backed down in the
face of regulatory opposition.